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The Crisis in United States Campaign Finance Reform

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The Crisis in United States Campaign Finance Reform International Journal of Politics and Good Governance Volume 3, No. 3.3 Quarter III 2012 ISSN: 0976 – 1195 THE CRISIS IN UNITED STATES CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM Mordu Serry-kamal Associate Professor, Winston-Salem State University, North Carolina, USA ABSTRACT Despite the myriad efforts made by the Congress of the United States and state legislatures to regulate the influence of money in American politics, the results have been manifestly disappointing. This assertion is premised on the fact that money in politics has not only increased in volume; but also, the complexity of its amassment has increased enormously in scope. Given these developments, therefore, it will be safe to state vehemently that attempts at curbing the influence of money in American electoral politics, through campaign finance reform laws, appear to have been quite unsuccessful. Introduction The logic underlying the history of campaign finance reform in the United States has been somewhat of an attempt to ensure that financial contributors or donors to the campaigns of political candidates would neither be allowed to sway elections nor acquire undue political influence in government decision-making when such candidates have been elected or reelected to office. This effort was undertaken for the purpose of discouraging corruption in American politics by preventing the fermentation of relationships that might be based on political quid pro quos. Corruption is regarded as a form of malfeasance; and, malfeasance is defined as “…the performance by public officials of deeds that they are forbidden to perform by constitutional or statutory law, or 1 International Journal of Politics and Good Governance Volume 3, No. 3.3 Quarter III 2012 ISSN: 0976 – 1195 by commonly accepted moral standards”.1 This includes the abuse of authority, such as bribery, for personal gain. Because campaign finance has increasingly been recognized as having the potential to establish such quid pro quo relationships among actors within the political arena, thereby generating an atmosphere of conflicts of interests, a growing number of reformers have reasoned that such activities must be subject to rigid governmental regulation. In his book entitled The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform, John Samples expresses the gist of this political sentiment: “Those who demand restrictions on money in politics – the ‘reform community’ – have dominated (and dominate) most public debates about campaign finance. They contend that money corrupts American democracy by perverting representation, undermining democratic political culture, lowering political discourse, fostering inequality, and reducing electoral competition. Democracy must be protected, they say, from the corruption brought by money and its owners”.2 Additional sentiments concerning the same issue have also been expressed even from Congressional quarters, perhaps in response to the popular clamor for reform. According to John Samples, certain Senators in the United States Senate are purported to have articulated their reasons for supporting the concept of campaign finance reform. These reasons are stated as: curbing the influence of special interests; ending the appearance of corruption; reducing some types of political advertisements; promoting democracy; increasing political equality; regaining control of campaign finance; acting in the public interest; restoring trust in government; increasing electoral competition; improving the political discourse; and finally, reducing spending in elections.3 In sum, these expressed objectives, which appear to constitute the overall goal of campaign finance reform, are a manifestation of the general recognition that the democratic political system must be protected from influences generated by the mass proliferation of money in the American electoral process. 2 International Journal of Politics and Good Governance Volume 3, No. 3.3 Quarter III 2012 ISSN: 0976 – 1195 Since the focus of this study is on campaign finance reform, reference to public or government sector corruption is largely limited to elected officials in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. This is significant because, collectively, these branches of government make public policies. Although generally regarded as non- political and non-partisan, judicial branch officials are nevertheless included for scrutiny for three reasons: one, elected officials nominate judges and justices (as the case may be) for office, via a political process, at both state and federal levels; two, decisions made by the courts have a legal impact on laws enacted by the legislative and executive branches of government; and three, some offices of the state judiciary in the fifty states are elected in partisan and non-partisan elections. In addition, from the perspective of federalism, laws enacted by the United States Congress through powers granted under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, preempt state laws through Article VI of the same Constitution. As a result, certain election laws enacted by states are carried out in conformity with such federal preemption. Altogether, therefore, this constitutes the political government infrastructure whose policies would have a direct bearing on campaign finance reform. On the basis of the premises delineated above, this writer posits that the idea of campaign finance reform is in crisis for four major reasons: one, the various laws which have been enacted in the past decades have not achieved their intended purpose of limiting the supply of money in electoral politics; two, because elections are increasingly becoming more costly in the United States, there is a commensurate dire need for more money by candidates running for elective office; three, since legislators themselves are a part of a confluence of beneficiaries of campaign finance deregulation, there appears to be a lack of motivation on their part to actually craft effective pieces of legislation that would be enforceable in that realm; and four, there appears to be no current concerted effort in the United States Congress that is oriented towards the promulgation of effective campaign finance laws, especially following the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010). Therefore, in an effort to demonstrate 3 International Journal of Politics and Good Governance Volume 3, No. 3.3 Quarter III 2012 ISSN: 0976 – 1195 this failure, a limited sample of the explosion of money in elections will be addressed below briefly, from historical and contemporary perspectives. Sandy L. Maisel and Mark D. Brewer provide an impressive summary of money in politics between 1952 and 2010: “…. it is clear that the amount of money spent on campaigns in the United States has grown exponentially over the past sixty years. In 1952, political scientist Herbert Alexander calculated that approximately $140 million was spent on political campaigns nationwide. In 2008 – like 1952, a presidential election year - $5.3 billion was spent on campaigns for federal office alone according to the Center for Responsive Politics, with an additional unknown amount spent on state and local races across the nation. The recently completed 2010 [mid-term] elections have also shattered records, with preliminary figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics indicating that total spending on federal races in 2010 came up to just short of $4 billion, an increase of more than $1 billion from 2006. The amounts spent on some individual races are enough to move even the most laissez-faire observer to raise an eyebrow – for example, $69.1 million spent on the 2000 Corzine-Franks senate race in New Jersey or the $16.8 million spent on the Bachmann-Clark congressional race in Minnesota (both records). In the 2010 California gubernatorial election, billionaire and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman spent over $170 million (final figures are not yet available), a little over $140 million of which was her own money. Whitman spent $2.6 million on [Election Day] alone, when everyone in their right mind knew she was going to lose. Many are speculating that President Obama will become the first presidential candidate to raise over $1 billion in his 2012 bid for reelection”.4 In addition, the mass media have also speculated that the total sum of expenditures in the current 2012 presidential race alone may supersede $3 billion, by virtue of the emergence of Super PACs. The final campaign spending figures for the 2010 California gubernatorial election show that Meg Whitman actually spent a total sum of $178.5 million; whereas, Jerry Brown who won the election, spent a total of $36.5 million.5 The Center for Responsive Politics 4 International Journal of Politics and Good Governance Volume 3, No. 3.3 Quarter III 2012 ISSN: 0976 – 1195 also revealed that the five highest-spending senate races in the 2010 elections took place in: Connecticut ($20.4 million); California ($18 million); Nevada ($17 million); Arizona ($16.8 million); and Arkansas ($11.8 million).6 At the local level, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is said to have spent over $75 million in each of his two successful elections in 2001 and 2005, respectively.7 For his reelection into a third term, he is purported to have spent a total of $102 million of his own fortune; and according to Michael Barbaro, this amount of money would equate to approximately $174 per vote, making this campaign the most expensive in the electoral history of New York City.8 Given these prevailing and on-going
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